


A Man In Amber

by J_Baillier



Series: Hell Be At The Door [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Family Secrets, Loss, Love, M/M, Pining, Romance, Sherlock's Past, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 06:41:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7303666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_Baillier/pseuds/J_Baillier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A oneshot based on "A Diseased Fancy". What was Victor thinking as he sat on the train headed towards London at the beginning of the storyline?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Man In Amber

**Author's Note:**

  * For [7PercentSolution](https://archiveofourown.org/users/7PercentSolution/gifts).



It had taken him a month to make the decision, and another month to actually implement it. 

First he'd emptied his Father's house. Then he'd arranged for movers to take the books and all the other things kept behind lock and key in his study to a rental storage in London. 

After that came the hard part. The painful part. The part he'd hoped he'd never even have to consider.

' _My collection of books is to go to Sherlock Holmes_ ,' Father's will had read. 

Victor could have left it all to solicitors, but he didn't have the funds to hire their services, nor was there any money coming his way in the form of inheritance. Paranoid and half-demented towards the end, his Father had spent every penny he'd ever had on travels and books. Victor himself had little savings, his sister had refused to have anything to do with Father for years now, and Victor didn't feel like he owed enough of a debt to the man to take on a loan to pay for such expenses. 

He sold what he could of the more normal of Father's possessions, and sent the rest to London. The bank got the house, which was hardly surprising. 

Their mother, long divorced and remarried, got nothing. 

Nothing at all for all those years of trying to turn an obsessed, driven individual into a reasonable family man. 

There was another reason for Victor feeling as though it was necessary for him to see to Sherlock's part of Father's will himself. With a heavy heart he had accepted that if he was ever to close that chapter of his life, to attain some level of closure - whatever that even meant - he'd have to be the one to deliver the books to their new owner. He'd have to be the one, because it was his fault Sherlock had been deprived of them in the first place. It had also been his fault that he and Sherlock had been deprived of one another.

Victor had followed the trajectory of Sherlock's life through the years. As aware as he was that googling the man's name every few months was no better than befriending an ex on some social media site, he hadn't been able to resist the temptation.

The internet had been a fledgling thing during the first years after they had both left Oxford. Not that there would have been much that a search engine would have coughed up, since Sherlock had dropped completely off the radar for a while. The only glimpse Victor had gotten of his life during the first few years after university had been at Victor's own graduation from Sandhurst Academy. There had been a skinny ghost standing at the edge of the tree-lined avenue where the ceremony had taken place, lingering between two oak trees in a white, ratty T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Pale, haggard but with a spine as straight as a ramrod and a defient edge to the poise of his shoulders. There had been no mistaking who it had been, even from a distance. Victor had felt as if standing on hot coals throughout the ceremony, stealing glances at the lone figure. When the pomp and circumstance of the graduation ceremony were finally over and done with and he'd managed to get away from his family for a moment, Sherlock had already disappeared.

The message had been loud and clear - Victor was remembered, but there was to be no resolution, no pathetically cinematic reunion of lovers that day. Or ever. 

Sherlock had reappeared on the proverbial radar a few years later - a newspaper article here and there, and Sherlock had started an odd blog about tobacco ash and soil samples and snappy retorts at whoever dared to comment on his writings. It was depressing, really - this was the Sherlock he'd met in his Father's house, all brusque angles, angry eyes hidden behind an overgrown fringe and no willingness to smooth down his interactions with others. 

Victor still vividly remembers how Sherlock had begun to come out of his shell during his visits at their house. Part of it had certainly been due to Father's influence, but it was no egotism that had let Victor to believe that he himself had had an even larger part in the transformation. There was no doubt about it - they'd both absolutely glowed once the shyness had abated and they'd allowed tentative adolescent curiosity to bloom into adult attraction. Even Sherlock's brother - who had always seemed his match, if not more, in intellect - had been able to tell something was going on. " _He thinks I've got a crush on some girl_ ," Sherlock had said and laughed.

Curiously enough, there was someone else is Sherlock's life now, but it was hard to put a finger on the exact nature of their relationship. _Confirmed bachelor_ John Watson, according to the papers. Victor has studied English literature and knows what that particular euphemism means, so he'd made the logical assumptions based on that description. For that reason he'd been slightly baffled at the wedding announcement on John's blog. 

Sherlock Holmes, _best man_. That would have been a sight to see. Damn, he'd looked handsome in those photos on John Watson's blog. Was this Watson bloke blind or just very hopelessly, stubbornly straight if he'd failed to notice?

Apparently Sherlock had become a private detective. A successful one, even: " _Reichenbach hero saves the day again_ ", a tabloid headline had read. Another article weeks later had been much meaner, painting a picture of a psychopath hiring actors to stage tragedies when the police didn't offer him enough excitement in the form of cases. That hadn't sounded like Sherlock at all. 

Victor had knocked over a teacup when he'd seen the " _Suicide of fake genius_ " one. He'd been furious at first - there was nothing fake about Sherlock. There couldn't be. Then his brain had actually registered the word 'suicide'.

He'd thought that was the end. He remembers sitting on the sand by the grey September sea, shivering in his T-shirt, sad and regretful, angry with himself for permanently losing his chance of ever making it right with the man. He'd been left off the hook, but it was a coward's relief. 

Victor had put Sherlock out of his mind until he'd had a chance encounter with an old university friend who had hired Sherlock for a case years earlier. It had been Sebastian Wilkes who'd laughed at Victor's confusion and told him that Sherlock was very much alive. Then Father had died, and suddenly Victor found himself feeling as though he was downright obligated to be the one who contacted the man. 

A letter wouldn't do. Nor would a phone call or an email. Perhaps seeing him would be more for Victor's own benefit than Sherlock's but still - they needed to meet. Victor needed to see that Sherlock was alright, in the end. He needed to see that those events long ago hadn't taken too much of a toll. 

It felt as though even from beyond the grave, his Father could still push the two of them off to unknown directions, like meteorites colliding in space and then shooting off on opposite trajectories.

Victor had agonized over the decision to give the books to Sherlock instead of responsibly destroying them and facing the consequences - ignoring the will would likely lead to legal troubles. He still remembers vividly his own anguish and worry over what those books had been doing to Sherlock. Still, they are both adults now, and surely a clever, succesful private detective can figure out how to safely keep such items without letting them take over everything. Sherlock had wanted access to those books, had wanted that knowledge - maybe he'd be ready for it now? The best case scenario was that other, saner pursuits might have made his interest in this arcane knowledge wane. 

Still the questions lingers: does Victor have the right to offer on a plate the very thing he'd once tried to save Sherlock from, and remind the both of them how their lives had been wrecked in the process?

Those books, that knowledge had alienated Father from his family, but Father had been an old, weak, prejudiced fool who couldn't see beyond his own interests. 

Sherlock was different. But was he different _enough_?

In the end, Victor had consoled himself with the thought that it was not his decision - it had been his Father's, and now it was Sherlock's choice. He could easily decline his former mentor's inheritance altogether.

When Victor had boarded this train to London, even after all the time that had passed, he'd felt as nervous as he'd been when he'd first plucked up the courage to tell Sherlock how he felt about the man. Victor had almost been tempted to practice in front of a mirror what he'd say, how he'd smile, how he'd want to look if he ever saw Sherlock again. Then he had realized that unless he just took off without too much thought, he would never have enough nerve to actually face the man. He hadn't even changed clothes when the sudden impulse to just throw himself off the deep end, to just go for it, had hit. He isn't exactly wearing anything his mother would have deemed acceptable for visiting, but it would have to do. Besides, changing into something resembling the clothes he'd worn during his school days - dress shirts, blazers - would have made him even more uncomfortable than he already was. They were theatrical clothes for a role he had walked out on. He also suspects that such a circumstantial reminder of their shared history wouldn't do him or Sherlock any good. 

Judging by the newspaper images, Sherlock still dresses exactly as he had back in the day. Does his older brother still buy all his clothes?

In the end, the only preparation Victor had undertaken prior to his hasty departure, was to take his dog to a neighbour who often looked after him. 

Victor is certain that when he goes to see Sherlock, it will be awkward. Maybe he'll get a door slammed in his face. There's no way to predict the outcome. Judging by the blog of Dr John Watson, Sherlock is still as arrogant, impulsive and unsocial as ever - perhaps even more so. Victor couldn't help but wonder if part of that was a carefully constructed front. The Sherlock he had known had not been so proactively disdainful of humanity and declarative of his own superiority. Back in the day, before Victor's father had sunk in his claws, Sherlock had been shy, his social interactions mostly governed by a desire to avoid the negative attention that many of his core traits seemed to attract like flies to a jar of honey. Now it seems that he practically flaunts them. Offence is the best defence?

If Sherlock is much different now, how much of it is due to Victor's actions? Do important, life-defining moments of tragedy cut off parts of us, and do those linger behind - permanent, stagnant, forever preserved in that state of pain like mosquitoes in amber? 

For years after leaving Oxford Victor had felt drained, hungover on the sour remains of what could have been. When he had finally felt as though he'd moved on years had gone and he had made a life for himself in a small corner of the world where the possibility of meeting someone new was small. Had some part of him chosen such a place without him making a conscious decision to do so? Was he punishing himself somehow, still? Is that what all that gentle cyberstalking had been for, after all? Instead of trying to console himself with evidence that Sherlock's life had not been ruined, he was torturing himself with the fact that while Sherlock had actually made a life for himself and perhaps even found someone to share it with, while Victor had turned away from the world. 

They never had had a chance to find out what could have been. Whether they would have stayed together or failed and went their separate ways is largely irrelevant. What the gist of it is this: they never got a chance for either, because that chance had been stolen from them. 

After the disaster they'd both been left without a safety net, without a direction, their feelings left drifting like ghosts - unfulfilled, unresolved, aimless. 

Those ghosts are gaining on Victor now.

For some people, life is a series of seized opportunities and triumphs. 

For others, it is a series of bitter what-ifs, a catalogue of regrets. 

And Sherlock Holmes will forever be Victor's biggest one.


End file.
